In 2017, while I was incarcerated against my will in a psychiatric institution in Buffalo, NY for ten days, I shared a room with a woman I will never forget.

She was Barbara to me at the time, although on one occasion, I asked her for her last name and I wrote it down in my composition notebook. Tonight, I looked through the pages of that notebook for her name. I have not been able to bear to look at what I had written during my time in hell with my friend until now. I found what I could handle reading for tonight. Three words:

Gaslighting: manipulating someone, by psychological means, into doubting their own sanity.[1] This may involve saying something and later denying having said it, making you question your memory, making you feel that everything is your fault, and even outright lying to you (and possibly those around you). Continue reading “Gaslighting”→

Every year around this time, we discuss the courage, character, and determination of hundreds of women who paved the way for us to have access to equal rights and for our voices to be not only heard but regarded as well. Continue reading “Christina Foster, Heart DR”→

When you’re ill, and you reach the threshold of what you consider ‘enough pain to warrant treatment,’ you can do a number of things: you can continue to live with the pain, you can try at-home remedies, you can seek out holistic forms of treatment that exist outside the medical realm, or you can go to the doctor.

For the month of February, I offer you a selection of websites/blogs that have been extremely helpful to me to learn about the ways in which oppression & mental health come together. In order not to be too overwhelming, I have chosen five different writers/pages, but of course there are many, many more! Take them as great places to start, but by no means the only places to look. Continue reading “Tanja Aho”→